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website design for nonprofits

Helping Nonprofits Squash Site Bugs

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Nonprofit Discounts WebsitesWhether you’re a Fortune 500 or a bootstrapping startup every legitimate company needs a website – it’s their digital storefront. Managing your company site at times can be a costly move. The constant back and forth between your team and developers isn’t easy. Imagine if you’re in the nonprofit sector, leveraging revenue in the best ways can be challenging to say the least.

That’s why we’re excited to share an exclusive promo for Nonprofit Organization provided by The Bug Squasher.

The Bug Squasher is a tool designed for freelancers, developers, site owners, anyone who manages their website. It video records, annotates, tracks and reports site bugs.

Imagine something is broken on your site, instead of emailing, texting, and/or calling a developer to fix it, you can video record the problem and provide a backend report on information they need to diagnose the issue.

Here’s a demo created by a YouTuber: https://youtu.be/ZpIjZdW5JCg

The Nonprofit Offer To Help Squash Website Bugs:

The Bug Squasher Team is offering the first 100 Nonprofits in 2019 access to the platform for 6 Months at no cost.
To qualify for this offer you need to provide the following:

  1. Proof you are 501c3 nonprofit ie 2-3 images of you and your team at work
  2. Website URL of your Nonprofit
  3. A short 5 sentence summary describing your cause
  4. A short 5 sentence summary listing the impact your cause will have

Email the above to info@thebugsquasher.com with the subject line, “Nonprofit Here”

Rules/ Reminders:

  1. This offer is only for the first 100 Nonprofits that reach out
  2. It expires by 2020
  3. The Bug Squasher reserve the right to deny any organizations ie if it appears information is missing or we are being misled or the organization supports negative causes.
  4. When you share the information we will select a few organizations and write a blog about them and share on our website and social media.
  5. You will be given access to The Bug Squasher


All we ask in return is for good causes big or small to reach out.

Happy Squashing!
–The Bug Squasher Team

 

Capital Campaign Websites: 9 Must-Haves

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Online Giving Website TipsA stand-alone capital campaign website is a great way to supplement printed campaign materials and expand the reach and effectiveness of your effort.

The campaign website works alongside printed materials to broaden the reach and flexibility of campaign messaging. It also offers specialized functionality that makes raising funds easier.

When you consider that a capital campaign often loses up to 4% of gifts due to unfulfilled pledges, online giving becomes an attractive tool for reducing attrition.

But there is a right way and a wrong way to bring your campaign online. Just adding a section to your current site is not a wise move. The features and functions required will overwhelm your normal site—and your potential donors. A stand-alone site tailored to the distinctive needs of a capital campaign is the way to go.

Let’s take a look at the nine parts of a great capital campaign website:

1. The Plan

Include an online presentation of your plan, expanded to include information that would not fit in the brochure: additional copy, project renderings, floorplans, etc.

2. Progress Bar

A progress bar shows your goal (and challenge goal) and tracks progress towards (and above) those benchmarks. The progress bar should be activated only after your campaign kickoff, to show early success.

Online Giving Sites3. Q+A

A good Q+A answers common questions and responds rapidly to questions that may arise through the campaign. This keeps misinformation in check and ensures there is no uncertainty in the minds of donors.

4. Resources

This section provides planned giving information so that donors can consider creative giving options in addition to their cash pledge. A Resources section can also provide downloadable architect’s plans, a masterplan document, or other lengthy pdf files.

5. News

A news feature enables you to keep the campaign fresh by going into depth on particular aspects of the effort and by providing testimonials from key individuals, announcements of campaign milestones, and more.

6. Video

Many of your visitors will like to read about your plans. Others will appreciate a video. This is a great way to bring your plans to life and can be shared via email and elsewhere.

7. Gifts Table

The venerable gifts table shows the sizes and numbers of gifts required to make your campaign a success. Bring the gifts table online.

8. Gifts Calculator

A calculator enables donors to see that they are capable of giving more than they might have guessed when the gift is broken into smaller payments. Donors can enter a total pledge and see how much would be given on an ongoing basis to meet that commitment. Alternately, they can enter what their payments might be and see what their gifts would add up to—the total pledge. Those little payments over 3-5 years can really add up.

9. Pledge Form

A secure pledge form enables recurring online giving so that donors can pay digitally on a recurring basis, dramatically reducing pledge attrition and enabling online giving to more than pay for itself.

You now know the nine key content features for your capital campaign website. But how the site is programmed is also important. Here are a few things to consider: 

Mobile-friendly: Your site needs to be built using responsive design so that it functions on smaller devices and serves the 20-40% of your audience viewing it from a smartphone.

Visually Consistent: While it is a different medium from printed materials, your site should share the same visual look and appear to be a natural extension of your other communications.

Secure: The site must be hosted securely to keep sensitive data safe and to reassure donors that you take their privacy seriously.

Easy to Update: A content management system allows administrators easy access to update the site and view gifts to keep the site fresh, keep campaign administrators informed, and reduce developer fees in the long run.

Easy to Maintain: Could you cobble together a pile of WordPress plugins to get the function you need? Maybe. But over the life of the campaign (3-5 years), plugin updates will occur that cause conflicts and feature failures. Troubleshooting those can take many hours and can lead to a bad experience for donors.

 The GivingTools Solution

You have a number of options. You can:

  1. Try to fit the above content in your current website.
  2. Build a site from scratch that provides this function (will it be done before the campaign is over?).
  3. Partner with a resource that provides capital campaign websites.

GivingTools provides a ready-made solution for capital campaign websites. Indeed, GivingTools is the only service that offers this. For a single fee (well under $1,000), GivingTools takes a pdf of your campaign materials and creates the entire site in just a few days. Secure hosting for 3-5 years is included at no extra cost. And if you want to allow online pledge payments, that can also be enabled, for just $14.95/month. That includes payments from banking accounts (ACH) for just 25 cents per payment…no percentages taken.

This resource makes creating your campaign site a piece of cake. You get a robust solution that meshes with your other communications and provides the convenience and power of online giving, all in a matter of a few days!

By planning on a capital campaign site, your campaign brochure can be a compelling overview that leads people to the site for more details. If a donor loses a pledge card (or wishes to make an additional commitment), it is simply a click away. And with online giving, unfulfilled pledges (3-4% of total pledges) can be dramatically reduced.

To see some examples of what a capital campaign site from GivingTools looks like, just visit givingtools.com. If done right, a dedicated capital campaign website can help maximize the success of your next capital effort.

 

Crucial Website Design Tips for Nonprofits

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website design tips for nonprofitsAccording to the Nonprofit Handbook written by Gary M. Grobman, “a nonprofit organization (NPO) or not-for-profit organization is an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals rather than distributing them as profit or dividends”. In today’s time, a NPO just like commercial businesses, has to walk hand-in-hand with the latest technologies for dissemination of relevant information about themselves as well as about the cause they stand for. This undoubtedly starts with the right website.

Below are given the points not-to-be missed while designing an NPO website. These factors if taken care of will not only increase the chances of a NPO website being discovered on search engines and social media, but also would bring an influx of regular visitors and eventually volunteers/donors/personnel.

1. Let the website’s theme be ‘Compassion’: The foundation of any NPO lies in a cause they support. This could be literacy, environment, energy, education etc.

  • An NPO’s website foremost should clearly depict this cause and their mission statement.

  • Images/compelling videos/graphs/charts used on the website to educate people about their cause should be able to evoke compassion and compel the visitors to at least stay longer on the website.

2. Bring focus to the Cheerleaders: Any NPO website should bring out its cheerleaders before its readers and potential followers.

  • A section on the website should focus on the successful projects and events organized by the NPO.

  • Testimonials by industry leaders, donors and volunteers should be included in form of videos and text.

  • Profiles of key personnel, board of directors and industry- & market- giants associated with the NPO, should be a part of the website, under a separate section.

  • The companies that partner with the NPO or which support the NPO through sponsorships and funds, should be listed on the NPO’s website under ‘Partnerships’.

3. Be Inspirational: A big contribution to any nonprofit is from the numerous people who devote their time, effort and money. These volunteers usually resonate and relate to the mission of the NPO. Hence, their website should be volunteer-friendly.

  • The message from past volunteers should speak about the joy of volunteering. This would keep the existing base of volunteers motivated as well as would attract other people to come forward in any form they can.

  • The website should present different ways in which someone can volunteer with them. A separate page should be devoted mentioning these options, which readers can choose from and contribute according to their convenience.

4. Being Donor-philic: Any NPO is highly dependent on funds raised at various events or the generous donations by their donor base. It is of critical importance that their website asks for ‘Donation’ in very simple form. A few things to be remembered are given below-

  • The donation process should be a single-step. Just a click of button and the website visitor should be directed to the donation form.

  • The donation form should not ask for unnecessary and too much information (this may put off the interested donor).

  • The user should not be asked to create an account before he can donate.

  • After the donation, make the donor feel welcome and his donation should be appreciated by giving him a choice to share his generosity on social media profiles like Facebook/Twitter/Google+ etc. This would be the NPO’s way of thanking him as well as a way to pull more donors from his network.

5. Come across as Informational/educational: Any NPO website should be seen as a storehouse of information concerning the cause they support.

  • Have a ‘News/latest updates’ section where latest information from the concerned field can be flashed.

  • The news items or pieces of information can be elaborated on a blog post. This would make the audience keep returning to the website to keep themselves abreast as well as to learn more.

  • The NPO can have a  forum where the queries of readers can be welcome and responded to. This would help the NPO establish itself as experts in their area.

6. Feel proud in being ‘Shareable’: The website as a whole and every page/post should have social media sharing buttons. This will increase followership as well as the visibility on search engines.

5. Be consistent in branding: Branding is all about having loyal followers. Any company/product/NPO becomes a brand after a series of regular and consistent marketing efforts.

  • The logos/fonts/colors used on the website should be consistent with the other promotional material used by the NPO. This would make it easily recognizable and also, will stay in memory longer.

  • The social media sharing buttons should be displayed in a way that they blend with the entire look and feel of the website.

6. Keep it simple & original: Originality and simplicity are the key to any website’s success.

  • Right from the textual content to the images/videos should be original. These should not be copied. Being original is the sign that the nonprofit is really concerned about the cause they support. Also, the photos should not be stock photos. More people donate to real pictures than to stock photos.
  • The website should not be cluttered with loads of information presented in bright colors. The look should be compassionate, professional and human.
  • The websites should always prominently display ‘Contact Us’ form, and wherever possible, a contact number should be given. Very often people prefer to give a quick call rather than writing a long email.

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